Signs from the Universe

(While Reading Hampton’s Thoughts on Restorative Justice in Dressler’s Criminal Law: Cases and Materials)

By Hayley Hammerstrom

Featured art: Textile by unknown

The dead bird unequivocally dead,

Pink entrails prolapsed from

A grey-down gut,

but on the margins of the

eyes’ ambit

the flightless mass

seems to croak out

a crooked note,

or nudge its wing up,

cockeyed but appearing

to quiver.

Not hypnagogic,

They consort in Platonic light.

Not hypnopompic,

They dwell in shadows

Purple and quiet.

I wove a web today.

To no avail.

I read the refrains of the late Jean Hampton –

How her name rings like the knock

Of a spoon on a crystal glass

At a post-nuptial toast.

Definite.

Familiar.

Her name’s akin to Mom’s.

And that retributivist rabble-rouser,

That eloquent think tank internalized in one woman.

She died April 2, 1996.

I was born April 2, 1997.

Jean E. Hampton.

Death premature

as an open umbrella

to a sky cut in halves,

one heavy, sagging –

the other silver

like a gorilla’s back.

You died of cerebral hemorrhage.

Grandma Joan did, too.

Indicia, indeed!

Indigo-ish indicia stringing its stems together to make your life-pattern manifest in me. Infestation of worms needn’t render your prime mind unusable. She transmitted her blueprint via inked-words-turned-fluorescent-pink-and-baby-bonnet-blue, little synthesized synaptic blurbs, into my cross-wired incubatory head. She didn’t intentionally. No, I don’t think she did so intentionally. Intent belongs to that invisible net that holds the atoms of the world together – and we cannot read its celestial hieroglyphics, so it is a waste of time to attempt translation.

Take my word for it, and let me tell you how Jean Hampton speaks to me through the veil of the cosmos:

Through incantations gliding through the tangled creeping plants of the mind through Venus flytraps and maple syrup and gurgling throats of herniated stomachs and salt- shakers and news reels and even the quiet quiet quiet process of sweat sullying a sweater (not to note the colors of winter that yield to the ecstatic when the weary mind frays and breaks).

Through the radiator that both crushes bones upon release from a skyscraper and cools the room surrounding me.

They all give me directions and make sense of time.

Jean E. Hampton!

Jean E. Hampton!

Are you really a sign?

Are you a herring, land-locked and ruddy-faced?

Or,

Are you a sign?

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Hayley Hammerstrom (she/her) is an Ohio University alumna with a B.S. in Journalism from the Scripps School. In the spring of 2019, while a senior at Ohio University, Hayley had two poems, titled "Miasma" and "Suburbia Noir," published in the literary publication Sphere Magazine. Publication of these poems is her self-proclaimed proudest achievement, as creative writing and storytelling have been the foundation of all her academic pursuits since childhood.

After graduating from Ohio University, Hayley proceeded to attend The Ohio State University to study at the Moritz College of Law in Fall 2019. She is now in her second (i.e., 2L) year at Moritz. During her 1L year, Hayley received a fellowship stipend from the OSU chapter of the Public Interest Law Foundation. This stipend allowed her to spend summer of 2020 in Athens where she served as a legal intern at the Athens County Prosecutor's Office, an agency for which she worked as an undergraduate student in a secretarial capacity. As a legal intern in 2020, Hayley had the opportunity to help prosecutors draft pretrial motions, collaborate with BCI specialists for evidence presentations anticipated for use at trial, and even engage in field work with Diversion Program participants. Hayley has always had a special place in her heart for the Athens community, and hopes to one day return as a practicing lawyer to the community to continue the progressive prosecution efforts of the Athens County Prosecutor's Office so citizens involved in the system are treated fairly and with compassion.

Hayley is a proponent for the arts as a critical tool in the practice of law and has written a number of essays and poems exploring the nexus between creative expression and legal interpretation. Her current project involves a surrealist legal argument, written in free verse, investigating concepts of psychoanalysis, natural law, and human agency in relation to drug regulation. She credits her art-driven legal perspective chiefly to her instructors and peers at Ohio University. She is excited to contribute to this project and is honored to be involved with the overwhelming literary talent that Ohio University has and continues to produce.